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On the Market: House on Golfview Road a Historical Oasis

Most seasoned Palm Beachers immediately link the late Marjorie Merriweather Post with one spectacular Palm Beach mansion. But Post’s extraordinary Mar-a-Lago on South Ocean Boulevard wasn’t the only house built on the island for the cereal heiress.

Hogarcito – “Little Hearth” in Spanish – at 17 Golfview Road was designed by architect Marion Sims Wyeth in 1921 for the socialite when she was married to financier Edward F. Hutton. That was six years before Wyeth and Joseph Urban created her oceanfront manse that today houses Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.

Hogarcito remains among the prizes of Palm Beach’s earliest Mediterranean-style architecture. It was built only two years after society architect Addison Mizner completed his first project, the nearby Everglades Club.

With more than 10,000 square feet of living space inside and out, the Spanish-Mediterranean-style house with five bedrooms and six bathrooms encompasses two buildings: the main house and a second house, which are connected by an arcade.

Nearly nine decades after it was completed, Hogarcito is owned, and its history appreciated, by investment advisor Bruce Bent, who bought it 25 years ago. “I love this house,” says Bent. “It has beautiful architecture, especially the back house, and it’s extremely comfortable.”

It also boasts an extraordinary site, directly facing the Everglades Club’s golf course and offering dramatic views from its upper windows and bell tower of the red-tile roofs of Worth Avenue as well as much of Palm Beach.

But those attributes – and the house’s interior gems – aren’t immediately apparent from the front exterior.

“My interest was mild when I first saw the outside of the house,” Brent acknowledges. “I got out of my car, walked through the driveway looked into the backyard. Wow! It was so much bigger, gracious and more beautifully designed from what I had seen from the front.

“The main house is built around a terrace, and the property is surrounded by the golf course, (landscaped) acres that I don’t have to take care of.”

But after years of enjoying the hospitality of the Little Hearth, Bent wants a smaller home, and so he has asked the Palm Beach brokerage of Linda A. Gary Real Estate, Inc., to list Hogarcito for sale at $14.8 million.

Hogarcito was a trend-setter when it was built, explains Palm Beach architectural historian and former Florida Atlantic University professor Donald Curl.

“It was the first house on Golfview,” he explains. “Many of the other houses were built literally because Marjorie Merriweather Post wanted to populate the street with what she called ‘young marrieds.’ Which was how she saw herself. She would have been in her 30s at that time and was married to her second husband.

“Golfview was like a housing development, particularly on the north side, where Wyeth did a number of little houses. They were purchased very quickly, and he added onto them over the years.”

Although impressive, Hogarcito was fairly simple in its layout and was never an enormous house, Curl says.

“That is part of the reason Mrs. Post built Mar-a-Lago. She always claimed Hogarcito was not big enough. She had all these daughters coming home with their friends, and she needed something larger. She decided she wanted a knock them-dead house.”

And she got that in spades in Mar-a-Lago.

But Hogarcito’s “courtyard is marvelous and the new pool adds to the whole thing,” Curl notes. “The house has all those exterior galleries and the tower has a bell in it. Wyeth was very proud of Hogarcito. He thought it had a good design,”

From the front door, one steps into an impressive foyer with a floor of Cuban tile and stone. Straight on to the south is the living room, where walls are covered in whitewashed boiserie, and the hardwood floors have been laid in a herringbone

pattern. On the west side of the room, French doors open to the courtyard and terrace, while on the east, they offer views of a garden.

Beyond the living room is an enclosed loggia with walls covered in trellis-work. “My favorite room is the loggia,” Bent says, “It looks out to the terrace, with its 17th-century fountain. The property has four working fountains, which provide a pleasant sound of water. The loggia is very relaxing.”

On the south side, the loggia’s French doors open onto a covered, open-air arched colonnade that leads to the separate two-story building on the property. Traditionally, Bent says, owners have used the rear house as the master suite, which has worked well for him, too.

“It is very convenient. The front house can be for your guests, so everyone can be in the house and not be running into each other,” Bent explains.

To the west of the foyer is a salon with hardwood floors and French doors that also lead to the courtyard terrace. Farther west is the dining room and then the kitchen. In this portion of the house are also the garage and staff quarters.

“The salon was the original dining room,” Bent says. “I’ve often set it up for three tables for 10, I’ve never had a luncheon there that hasn’t gone off perfectly well. I’ve had dances on the terrace. It makes for a magical evening, with the Mizner lanterns in the trees.”

To the east of the foyer and up a few steps is an intimate library, which is appointed with Cuban-tile floors, a pecky-cypress ceiling and a fireplace. On the second floor are three ensuite guest bedrooms and a master-bedroom suite – all opening onto an L-shaped covered veranda overlooking the courtyard and terrace.

And then there’s the bell tower. When Bent moved into the house it was boarded up.

“I opened it up, and to my surprise, there were bedrooms and a bathroom up there. I converted the space into a den,” he explains “There are two terraces on the roof. They are very private, and it’s a neat spot.”

Bent adds: “I think the pool is beautifully designed and situated.”

Like the house itself, the pool offers a quiet oasis, a place to relax and enjoy the pastoral views, just a block from bustling Worth Avenue and the heart of town.

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